Re: Army top brass expresses dismay over US aid bill
I want to ad here the statement of PML N’s … N$
PML(N) and Kerry-Lugar
PML(N) chief Mian Nawaz Sharif has said that he will soon return from abroad where he is at the moment, to press for Parliament to give a definitive decision on the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, as well as decide the bye-elections issue. Mian Nawaz said this while talking to Nawai-i-Waqt in London, which he is visiting these days. He said that if US Congress was free to decide about the Bill, Pakistan’s Parliament was also free to look at the benefits and damage of the Bill, and to take a decision on whether or not to accept it accordingly. However, Mian Nawaz did not make it clear about how a Parliament which had yielded an executive which had accepted the Kerry-Lugar Bill would decide any differently about it. He did not directly link his by-election decision to this, but said that he would decide this when he returned to Pakistan.
By saying that those who had forced the personality who made Pakistan a nuclear power to confess to proliferation were only capable of provoking pity, Mian Nawaz again aimed a barb at Pervez Musharraf, but this was also a criticism of the Bill, which demands Pakistani collaboration in getting hold of Dr A.Q. Khan. Mian Nawaz may have the best of reasons to be abroad, but at this critical juncture of the nation’s life, he should remember that he is the leader of one of the country’s two largest parties, and should be in Pakistan at the moment. True, his wife may be under treatment, and all his children may be there, but that does not cancel out his responsibility to be back in Pakistan to deal with issues that cannot be handled by anyone apart from himself. The Kerry-Lugar Bill may provide an example of how his party struggled to establish a definite opinion and provide appropriate guidance to the nation, apart from being an example of how the country is being treated by its
rulers.
Mian Nawaz should realise that while he was in exile, the party managed to survive, but it was badly battered, precisely because it had to make do without his leadership. Now that he has returned to Pakistan, and could re-enter Parliament through a by-election, the situation has changed, and any attempt to use the old methods of control, with the party present in both Houses of Parliament and all four provincial assemblies, even in government in one province, will not work except to create the very confusion that Mian Nawaz disdainfully says is not caused by his party. Mian Nawaz’s family may be very dear to him, and it has every right to remain in any country that will have its members, but Mian Nawaz, if he wishes to lead his party at this delicate juncture of national affairs, must do so in person, and at home.
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